Christians, and together as the Church, are called to take up the Cross daily and follow Christ. This does does refer to 'crosses' such as pains, frustrations, annoyances, challenges, etc, but to the instrument of death upon which the Son of God and the world's Redeemer was crucified.
Donald MacLeod makes a very poignant point in his application of this principle when he remarks that speaking out is an integral aspect of Cross-bearing. He condemns the church for her silence when she should speak out, and mentions the Highland Clearances, the Robertson Smith affair and the jingoism of the early days of the First World War. Many other examples of ecclesiastical silence could be forwarded such as the church's deafening silence over the immoral political arrangements we have for the government of Northern Ireland, the spread of sodomy both inside and outside the churches, the increasing level of 'cover-up' that it being perpetrated by the churches, etc.
For the church to take up the Cross daily, she is required to speak out the Word of God as she exercises her prophetic ministry. If she does not speak out, then she has lost her prophetic voice and ministry and calling. She is not the church! As Christ's Body on earth, she simply cannot maintain a low profile. Today there are literally lorry loads of 'wisdom' within the church, but that is all being used either to silence Gospel preachers or to avoid trouble. The reluctance, nay refusal, of the church to exercise her God-given prophetic ministry is culpable. Her big boggy man is the fear of giving offense, even where that offense is justified. When the church links herself extremely closely to a government body in order to extract financial favours from that body, she has sold her soul to politics! And when you have extracted political favours that are financial in nature, then you undertake not to offer any criticism of the 'powers that be' so as not to display ingratitude. But speak out, the churches will not - ANY OF THEM!
But she is most content to stay within her own cloistered precincts and utter pious platitudes within well-defined party-lines. She sees herself as having a calling from God to keep on counting the number of angels that can stand on the point of a pin, while the nation within which she is supposed to be "salt" and "light" goes to hell! But who cares!
It is precisely this mentality, this lack of true and reformed spirituality, that allows the church to pussy-foot around the great crises that face us all at this time - the moral meltdown that is everywhere evident, the corruption in high places (you can't say anything about that because your own church members are in the middle of it!), the growth in prostitution in Northern Ireland alone, with men spending almost £500,000 each week on this 'service' that is offered in the known 88 brothels that blight our once noble land.
This explains why the churches today have lost all their moral authority as the Voice of God in this nation. Modernity and being contemporary is much more important than being faithful to Christ, the church's only King and Head. Macleod opines, "It was precisely because he refused to keep such a low profile that Christ was crucified." He brought His own crucifixion on Himself! He spoke light into the darkness of His world, and He was crucified for it. He shown the light of God's truth into the hypocritical Pharisees, and they blasted Him for so doing. It was His radical message that invited trouble from the Jewish and Roman authorities. Indeed, the very life He lived was a constant rebuke to the religious society that it impacted. The Cross did not just happen to Him; "He provoked it by His own words and actions," says Macleod. Continuing, he asserts, "His death itself was a priestly act. But he provoked it by his prophetic ministry and especially by his scathing denunciations of the self-appointed guardians of the law. His talk was, to say the least, 'careless.'"
How true! The churches today, all of them, are getting an easy time because they have lost their prophetic voice in the nation. Not only have we very poor political leadership, there is virtually no spiritual and oral leadership in our country. "Every man does that which is right in his own eyes." Macleod is principled enough to know what to say, when to say it, and to whom to say it. He knows his Bible well enough to say what has to be said without fear or favour. He still exercises his prophetic ministry; but few others are doing this.
The church today is silent. Is that because she believes in her heart of hearts that the God she is supposed to serve is also silent?
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